


My Hopes Are So High That Your Kiss Might Kill Me

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-12
Updated: 2009-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:39:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conversation catches up with Quinn and a slow smile drifts over her face. “You want to kiss me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Hopes Are So High That Your Kiss Might Kill Me

Quinn glances up and down the hallway, but there’s no one there, just like the last time she looked, thirty seconds ago. Only Rachel is left, reading over what looks like a giant checklist, pulling books out of her locker and putting some back.

 _Do it_ **,** her mind screams at the same time that she feels her body being propelled across the tiled floor, as if invisible hands pushed her from behind.

Rachel looks up when Quinn collides with another locker.

“Hey, Quinn,” she says brightly, biting her bottom lip.

 _This is a bad idea,_  she reminds herself, but it’s like she’s also being told to ignore herself at the same time.

They’ve been flirting with the idea of friendship in the last couple of weeks since Sectionals, because Quinn wasn’t kidding when she said she wasn’t mad at Rachel for being brave to do what Quinn couldn’t, and so far it was going well. As a general rule, Finn is a taboo topic and Puck is only brought up when necessary, but Quinn has had worse friendships and Rachel hasn’t had that many at all, so they find common ground in music and their fear of Sue Sylvester and their desire to gag every time Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury are in the same room, because they both get this pitiful, gag-inducing look on their faces.

Recently, though – since Puck pointed out how Rachel really wasn’t all that annoying and that she was a  **really**  good kisser – she’s been consumed with the idea of being more than just friends. At first, she thought it was the hormones, but then she decided it was just because Rachel was unlike anyone she had ever met – honest to a fault, determined, insufferable, unapologetic, and blessed with more talent than Quinn would know what to do with

“Will you go out with me?” she asks quickly.

Rachel’s smile falters a little, but holds steady before it slide off her face completely.

“To, like, the mall?” Rachel asks in an uncharacteristic manner; one, Quinn has noticed, Rachel started picking up from Brittany.

She thinks about taking the out fate is clearly providing her and saying  **“** _yeah, I need a new dress”_ but her mouth opens and something entirely different comes out.

“No. I mean, on a date. With me.” There. She can’t take it back now.

Rachel’s mouth opens and something like a squeak comes out.

“Was that a yes?” Quinn asks, trying to come off as joking and failing miserably.

“I,” Rachel starts and then closes her unhinged jaw. “Are you pulling a prank on me?”

“What?” Quinn all but screeches, tugging at the end of her ponytail and looking around even though she knows there’s no one around. “No,” she hisses. “God, just say no already. This is humiliating enough.”

“Okay,” Rachel shrugs.

Quinn hesitates. “Okay, what?”

“I’ll go on a date with you,” Rachel says, her voice only breaking once.

Quinn feels something rush through her and understands that it’s not relief, but terror and gives Rachel what she hopes is a bright smile. “Friday, then,” she manages to say without stuttering.

“Eight o’clock,” Rachel adds, straightening and staring defiantly. “Don’t be late.”

\---

“This is a terrible idea,” she says under her breath again, the whisper dying as soon as it leaves her mouth in a burst of hot air against the cool winter night. “What are you thinking Fabray?” She checks her cell phone and groans as she makes her way up the walk.

She’s officially four minutes late.

“Shit, shit,  _shit_ ,” she murmurs, taking a moment to compose herself, pulling down on the hem of her top, shivering a little the wind catches her jacket and slips inside.

Just before she can reach for the doorbell the big wooden door swings open and a tall African-American man is staring down at her with a bemused smile.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”

Quinn smiles nervously. “Car trouble.”

He nods like he understands completely and ushers her inside. The warmth of the house envelops her immediately, wrapping her in a cocoon of comfort and Quinn can feel the tension in her shoulders slip away gently, as if it was never there at all.

“I’m Phil,” he says, offering her a hand. “Rachel’s Dad.”

“Quinn,” she replies, letting go of his a second too late. “Rachel’s date.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth she sighs inwardly but keeps her smile plastered on her face.

Phil laughs a little and throws his head towards the stairs. “I’ll go see what’s keeping The Diva.”

Quinn stands in the middle of the front hall, spinning in a slow circle on the heel of her flat.

“Quinn, right?” a voice asks from behind her. A man with glasses and a soft, easy smile is leaning up against the wall. “I’m James, Rachel’s other Dad.”

“Quinn Fabray,” she says, introducing herself. He takes her hand and shakes it.

“Nervous?” he asks gently and Quinn feels her resolve break.

“What if she changed her mind and decided she doesn’t want to go out with me after all?” she asks in a nervous rush. “I mean, what if she doesn’t want to be seen in public with the pregnant girl?” Her eyes go wide and her face pales. “Oh my god, what if  _you_  don’t want her to be seen with the pregnant girl?”

Warm hands clamp down on her shoulders, steadying her suddenly swaying body. “Quinn, why don’t you take a second to breathe?”

She takes a deep breath but never exhales because Rachel is suddenly at the bottom of the stairs and she’s got her arms crossed over her chest and she’s glaring and she’s  _gorgeous_.

“You were four minutes and thirty-eight seconds late,” she points out blandly.

Quinn feels the world slide back into place – of course Rachel would be mad about those four minutes and thirty-eight seconds when she probably planned on making Quinn wait at least fifteen minutes by the front door – and lets out the air in her cheeks with one big  _whoosh!_

“Well, I’m here now,” she points out, “and so are you.”

“Have a good night,” Phil says, opening the door for them graciously.

James holds up two thumbs when Quinn looks back and she tries to curb her unbidden smile before Rachel sees it, for some reason she can’t understand.

\---

Rachel stands at the car expectantly, staring at the passenger seat beyond the glass of the window and when Quinn starts to round the car, she sighs heavily and looks pointedly from Quinn to the door.

Quinn almost laughs in relief.

Here she is, worried that things are going to be weird and different in a bad way and that she’s just going to screw all of this, and sure she was late and apparently, she already is screwing up, but Rachel Berry is so reliably constant that Quinn almost wants to kiss her right now.

“Did you want me to get that for you?” she asks sweetly, coming back around the front of the car, sliding into the small space between Rachel’s body and the door.

Rachel huffs. “Well, it would be nice of you.”

“Of course it would be,” Quinn says softly, lifting up and pulling out. Rachel takes a small step backward to avoid the swinging door and the smile Quinn gets as Rachel drops gracefully into the seat is enough for Quinn to shut the door gently and cross back to the driver’s seat.

 _Rachel being Rachel is going to make this easy_ , Quinn thinks.

\---

At dinner – Giovanni’s downtown, where the pasta is really the only thing that always comes out perfect, but the tables are spread about and Giovanni’s wife Maria sits in the corner table and chats with everyone who walks by – Quinn makes sure she’s at the door before Rachel even has her seatbelt off and she’s reaching in through the open door to offer Rachel her hand.

This being the guy thing is new, but when Rachel’s hand slides into her own and then Rachel doesn’t let go as they cross the parking lot, Quinn decides she might be able to get used to it.

\---

Giovanni puts them against the wall near the old jukebox that doesn’t work, placing menus at the end of the table and saying something in Italian that Quinn doesn’t understand, but it makes her heart melt every time she hears it.

“My dad’s didn’t say anything embarrassing, did they?” Rachel asks, her voice oddly nervous.

Quinn blinks a few times, her gaze stuck, mesmerized, on Rachel’s hand shredding a napkin furiously and  _maybe_ , she thinks with a sudden flare of hope, _Rachel is just as anxious as I am_.

“No,” she says simply, quirking her mouth in a smile. “Your dad, James? He’s very sweet.”

“He’s the teddy bear,” Rachel explains, leaning forward over the table. “He’s too nice. My Dad accuses him of not knowing how to say ‘no’ because he never turns anyone down.”

Quinn leans forward too. “I guess you didn’t inherit that, huh?” She braces herself for a slap across the face or a kick in the shins or an outburst.

“Well,” Rachel drawls instead, her voice pitchy. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

It’s the first time since Quinn surged across the hallway at the end of school two days ago and abruptly asked Rachel to go on a date with her that the brunette has shown any hesitation about the whole thing.

“You are,” Quinn agrees, her hand under the table lifting off her knee, straining to reach across the tablecloth and take the napkin pieces from Rachel. She holds still though and only smiles instead. “You want to be, right?” she asks suddenly, her chest constricting.

Rachel’s hesitant nod doesn’t loosen the tight feeling. “I, yes?”

Quinn bites down on her back teeth. “If you want to-”

The waitress interrupts, smiling down at them from behind her over-painted red lips. “What can I get you girls?” she asks loudly, flourishing her pad and pen.

Quinn turns to stare at the jukebox while Rachel orders and she swears the George Strait’s album cover is mocking her.

\---

As soon as the waitress is gone behind the swinging doors, Quinn grabs for her purse angrily.

“What are you doing?” Rachel asks, her hands resting on the tabletop.

“I’ll pay my half and when she comes back out we can tell her just to box it up.”

Rachel looks genuinely confused. “Are you leaving?”

Quinn feels foolish. She feels like an idiot, and she  _knew_  this was bad idea from the start, but there was a part of her that saw Rachel at the bottom of the stairs in a sky blue dress and a white sweater that told her pessimistic half to shut up because this just might work.

“Of course I’m leaving,” Quinn hisses, ducking guiltily when an older couple a few tables over looks up. “You don’t even want to be here,” she says with less volume.

“Yes I do,” Rachel argues, reaching one hand to the middle of the table. “I’m just-”

“I get it,” Quinn interrupts.

Rachel shakes her head. “No, you don’t. This is something wholly new to me, Quinn. You don’t like me, remember. Or at least,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “You didn’t like me. But then we started being friends, almost, and it while it was unexpected, it wasn’t unthinkable.”

Quinn cuts in wearily. “Is this where you tell me this is a mistake?”

“I think you should let me try and finish,” Rachel says calmly. “I’m emotionally invested in Finn.”

Quinn feels her face drain of color.

“No,” Rachel rushes to continue. “I’m emotionally invested in the idea of Finn. I think we both are, and I guess I thought you were asking me on this date because, well, because Finn won’t talk to you but he’ll talk to me.”

“You thought I asked you out because I wanted to talk about Finn?”

Rachel gulps and Quinn can see her entire throat move. “Yes.”

“Way to make a girl feel special,” Quinn mutters under her breath.

She’s looking back at her reflection in the jukebox, so when Rachel’s hand touches hers, the touch like ice, she jumps, her knee colliding with the underside of the table. She doesn’t pay attention to her throbbing leg though, because Rachel’s hand moves across her skin and then their fingers are laced together, right there in the middle of the table next to the centerpiece.

“I want to be here,” Rachel says with a smile that makes Quinn grateful Rachel inherited  _something_  from James. “I’m not really sure  _why_  I want to be here, but I do.”

This Rachel isn’t the Rachel back at the car, or in the parking lot, or standing at the bottom of her stairs, daring Quinn to challenge on her on how long it took her to come out of her room. This Rachel is shy and hesitant and probably would open her own door, and while Quinn thought that the first Rachel, the everyday-Rachel was the Rachel she wanted, Quinn is fine with the one she has now.

\---

“It was just that one time,” Rachel is explaining in between her bites of pasta. She twirls her fork, catching an errant strand and winding it around the metal prongs. “I think I might have been distracted by his guitar.”

Quinn chokes on a bite of garlic bread, coughing into her napkin before a glass of water is slipped into her hand. Rachel stares at her, concerned, until Quinn takes a few swallows and clears her throat.

“Is that supposed to be a code word for something?” she asks, blushing.

Rachel’s eyes go wide. “No!”

The old couple frown at them.

“No,” Rachel repeats, softer. “I’m talking about his guitar. He was playing for me and the music,” she trails off and bites her bottom lip. “Did it sound like a code word?”

Quinn smiles and shakes her head. “It’s just, it’s Puck, you know? I wouldn’t put it past him to, try something,” she decides on saying, trying to put it as nicely as she can.

She thinks she sees Rachel frown, but the look is gone as soon as it comes. “He didn’t,” Rachel says resolutely. “I wouldn’t have let him.”

“And that’s why you’re not the pregnant teenager,” Quinn mutters.

“Quinn,” Rachel starts.

She cuts the other girl off. “No, I’m sorry.” Quinn shakes her head slightly and smiles, looking at Rachel from up under her lashes. “Tell me something.”

Rachel is silent and Quinn takes another bite of her pasta before she realizes that Rachel is probably waiting for the rest of the sentence.

“Sorry,” she says, swallowing quickly. “I meant tell me something about you that no one else knows.”

She leans back a little in her chair and isn’t surprised when Rachel puts down her fork thoughtfully and seems to really think about it.

“In preschool,” Rachel says, smiling a little, “I refused to participate in the class song during the talent show, because they wouldn’t let me wear a tutu.”

Quinn holds her composure for all of ten seconds before she lets out the first giggle and after that she’s powerless to stop herself but Rachel grins good naturedly and shrugs. “Is that why your Dad calls you The Diva?”

Rachel blushes a little. “He-he called me that?”

Quinn nods and Rachel groans.

“He says it because he knows it embarrasses me.”

“I think it’s cute,” Quinn says nonchalantly. “My dad used to call me Quinnie,” she offers.

Rachel’s smile fades a little and her eyes cloud, and then brighten. “When I was eight,” she says excitedly. “I decided that I was going to go to New York, whether or not my Dads were okay with it or not. So, I bought I bus ticket with money that I had been saving in my piggy bank for the last couple of Chanukahs and climbed onto that bus with a suitcase filled with all the playbills my Dads had given me and my favorite outfit and my teddy bear.”

Quinn leans back in, her smiling growing with every word. “You didn’t really, did you?”

Rachel nods, grinning. “The bus got as far as the Lima County line before it was pulled over by the cops and my Dads were screaming and I was just awed by all the pretty lights.”

Quinn laughs without holding it back; Rachel’s smirk widens and she ducks her head.

Quinn doesn’t think about her father for the rest of dinner.

\---

Quinn glances up from pushing the pasta she just can’t eat around and catches Rachel’s eye, immediately blushing and ducking her head back down.

She waits a couple of seconds before looking back up, and this time, when Rachel’s eye lock with her own, she holds it for a moment before looking back her pasta.

She thinks she feels her heart skip.

\---

“We could go for a walk,” Quinn suggests. Giovanni’s is closing down; the waitresses are gathering the clean silverware and folding the tablecloths and they’re the only ones left besides the old couple who look like they’re getting ready for leave.

Rachel nods and jumps from her chair at the same time, then stills her movements completely and shrugs. “I mean, sure, if you want to.”

Quinn laughs, sliding another two dollars under the check to add to the tip, and grabs her coat off the back of the chair. “We don’t have to,” she says, “if you don’t want to.”

“I’m fine with whatever,” Rachel says nonchalantly, but her eyes are shining and she’s biting her lip like she can’t contain her smile.

Impulsively, as she’s walking towards the door, she ducks her head a little and brushes her mouth against Rachel’s cheek, catching mostly hair, but finding warm skin beneath, lingering just long enough, her hand tangling in Rachel’s and squeezing before letting go.

\---

Downtown Lima is bigger than people think it is; bigger than Quinn ever though it was, because she’s sure they’ve been walking for hours and haven’t been on the same street twice.

“I don’t know,” Quinn says suddenly, shaking them out of their silence. They’re walking on separate sides of the sidewalk, ambling slowly from streetlight to streetlight. “Why I asked you out,” she clarifies.

Rachel’s step falters.

“I mean,” Quinn rushes to explain, her next two steps bringing her across the concrete to Rachel, stumbling a bit into Rachel’s side. “I wanted to. I’m glad I did. I just, well, I’m-”

“I’m glad you did,” Rachel says softly, saving Quinn from her explanation.

“So this isn’t some recon mission from Finn, or anything?” Quinn prays that Rachel can’t hear the fear in her voice, or the hope in her eyes, and she’s grateful when Rachel doesn’t even look over at her.

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I’m afraid of,” Quinn admits, shrugging. The movement is unnoticed under heavy coat.

Rachel is silent for a moment before speaking. “I can’t tell you I understand why you asked. Or why I said yes.”

Quinn laughs nervously. “I think you said ‘okay,’ actually.”

“Okay,” Rachel says out of the corner of her mouth, looking at Quinn quickly. “I still don’t know why I agreed. You, you’re intriguing, Quinn.”

“I can work with intrigued,” Quinn says readily and then realizes she means it.

Rachel is the only person who hasn’t changed since  _The Pregnancy Debacle 2009_ , or so Santana calls it under her breath. Everything she’s expected Rachel to do, the brunette has done. She never figured Rachel would keep the baby’s father a secret, but at the same time, she never imagined Rachel would apologize for it afterwards. When Finn kicked her out, she didn’t think Rachel would offer a room at her house – and she turned Rachel down because her father told her it was time she acted like an adult and come back home. She wanted to remind him that  _he_  kicked her out, but held her tongue because she really couldn’t go to Rachel’s, even if it was a nice offer – and she didn’t think that on Monday, after Sectionals, Rachel would be sitting on the front steps of the school waiting for her to show because she  _“just wanted to make sure Quinn was still Quinn and still pregnant,”_ only smiling when Quinn snapped at her and told her that they weren’t friends just because Quinn successfully had nothing anymore.

She didn’t expect Rachel to offer to study together – an offer out of pity, Quinn assumed – or each lunch together. Slowly, though, she stopped snapping when Rachel offered her the answers on a Spanish test – because  _everyone_  could see the dark circles under her eyes and the lack of color in her cheeks – and she started thinking that Rachel wasn’t so bad, once you got past the Diva-moments and the know-it-all attitude and her ridiculous chasing after Finn.

If Rachel is only intrigued, Quinn can start there and work her way up to interested, and into dating, because that’s how she got Finn and Puck – well, Puck skipped past the dating stage and jumped right into the sex thing and they all know that ended up – and she figures Rachel can’t be any different.

“Quinn-”

She cuts Rachel off, her hand finding Rachel’s again without really trying. “I’m interested,” she says forcefully. “And you’re intrigued, so it’s a start. I can work at it until you’re interested like I am.”

“Quinn,” Rachel says again, tugging lightly on their joined hands. “It’s just new, okay?”

Quinn nods shakily and smiles even more unsure, but Rachel doesn’t let go of her hand and when they suddenly end up back at the car, Quinn thinks, with a sense of disappointment, it’s possible that Lima isn’t as big as she thought it was after all.

\---

“Take this right,” Rachel says out of nowhere. Quinn, reflexively, jerks the steering wheel to the right with one hand. Her other hand, wrapped around Rachel’s tenses on the console between them before relaxing as she successfully maneuvers the turn.

“Where are we going?”

Rachel hums and ignores her, pointing at the street on the left. “Take that turn.”

Quinn does, looking for any sign coming from Rachel out of the corner of her eye, but the brunette stares straight ahead, her hand constant warmth in Quinn’s.

“Stop the car,” Rachel says in a low voice and Quinn pulls over, taking her hand out Rachel’s to put the car in park. She sits completely still in the driver’s seat, except for her fingers that tap nervously against the steering wheel.

“I can’t do this,” Rachel says. Quinn feels her heart sink a little and the nervousness she felt before knocking on the door to the Berry house grows ten-fold. “I mean-”

“Rachel,” Quinn interrupts wearily. “You don’t need to explain.”

“It’s just, my Dads,” Rachel continues.

Quinn bites the inside of her cheek. “Seriously, you don’t have to.”

“You make me nervous as it is, and if they’re just there-”

“Rachel, stop,” she pleads.

Rachel turns in the passenger seat and stares at Quinn with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to hear that you can’t even get through a date with me,” she says angrily.

“What are you talking about?”

Quinn’s eyes go wide and she feels her face grow hot. “What are  _you_  talking about?”

“I was  _trying_ ,” Rachel says, emphasizing the last word, “to explain that I can’t kiss you goodnight on my front porch, or anywhere near my house because my father’s will most likely be watching from the picture window and they make me nervous, especially since they tried to give me a ‘Birds and the Bees’ talk when they caught me practicing kissing on my pillow,” Rachel rambles. “What are you talking about?” she asks again.

“I thought you were letting me down easy and going to kick me out of the car and make me walk home.”

Rachel snorts –  _delicately_ , Quinn thinks. “Hardly. It’s your car, after all,” she points. “And I don’t actually have any driving experience.”

The conversation catches up with Quinn and a slow smile drifts over her face. “You want to kiss me?”

Rachel nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“Like,  _kiss me_ , kiss me?”

“If you wanted to,” Rachel says tentatively, her fingers’ twisting together in what Quinn has learned is a nervous tick. “I mean, you don’t have to. I don’t even know if you  _want_  to, but it’s a first date and sort of customary and I was wrong to think that you would want-”

“Rachel,” Quinn instructs, shifting so that her hip is pressed to the console between them. “Be quiet for a second.”

Rachel’s mouth snaps shut and Quinn closes her eyes, thinking. When she opens them again, Rachel is leaning in and her face is blurring in Quinn’s gaze from being so close and then Rachel is breathing against her mouth, hot puffs air.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Rachel says. Quinn feels it more than she hears it, and when she nods her forehead bumps lightly against Rachel’s and she smiles.

“Okay,” she whispers back.

Rachel tilts her head to the left and stretches her neck forward, catching Quinn’s lip between her own, sucking a little and pulling back. Quinn whimpers and follows her, leaning up and over the console, bracing one hand against the headrest of the passenger seat while the other curls around Rachel’s neck, pulling the brunette in against her mouth.

She feels a hand press against her cheek, then disappear and press again, this time around her waist. Rachel’s fingers clench, bunching up the edge of her shirt and there’s one solitary fingernail digging into her flesh.

Quinn pulls back and takes a gulp of air and Rachel’s head presses into the crook of her neck, dark, silky hair rubbing against the skin under her chin.

There’s one light kiss against her collarbone and then Rachel’s hand is sliding against her rib, pulling back and touching the underside of Quinn’s jaw.

“I couldn’t have done that in front of my parents.”

Quinn laughs and swoops back in, kissing pink lips quickly and firmly. “Neither could I,” she whispers quietly.

Rachel pulls her hand onto the console, cradling it between her own and smiles brightly.

\---

“I think they’re spying on us,” Rachel whispers, fiddling with her keys in one hand, the other tracing the knuckles of Quinn’s hand.

Quinn steps in closer and wraps her free arm around Rachel’s waist. “We could give them a show, if you wanted?”

Rachel laughs loudly in Quinn’s ear, a laugh that’s long and honest and beautiful. “I don’t think I’m prepared for that just yet.”

“That’s fine,” Quinn says low, her voice serious and her eyes dark.

Dark hair dips down and then Rachel is looking back up, staring into Quinn’s eyes and giving her a soft, slow smile. “Is it?”

There’s an unspoken question hanging between them; Quinn can see it dancing in the air like a light show, hanging and spinning in the empty space and Quinn’s almost positive she could reach out and grab it and put it in her pocket to take out later, to stare at as she falls asleep.

“Yeah,” she whispers almost inaudibly.

Rachel’s smile widens and Quinn watches as she lifts on her tiptoes and presses one, chaste kiss to the corner of Quinn’s smile.

Quinn blushes and ducks her head. Rachel slides her key into the lock and turns towards the door, her hand still caught in Quinn’s, looking back over her shoulder as their hands disconnect.

She watches Rachel open the door, walking backwards towards her car.

“You guys!” she hears Rachel yell, not stopping the grin on her face.

Quinn turns on her heel and buries her hands into her pocket, smiling to herself, fumbling for her keys to her car. At the driver’s side, she pauses with her hand gripped around the open door, looking up just as a light upstairs goes on.

She checks her cell phone and groans.

She’s officially four minutes late for her curfew.


End file.
